Here’s a remarkable chart cobbled together from a survey of state Medicaid directors by the Kaiser Family Foundation. It’s a little ugly, but bear with me.
This is a projection of Medicaid enrollment and spending for 2015 that compares states that accepted the Obamacare Medicaid expansion with those that didn’t. As you can see, in states that accepted the expansion, enrollment is forecast to cover 18 percent more people compared to only 5.2 percent more in non-expansion states. And as you’d expect, this will cost money: total Medicaid spending will rise faster in expansion states than non-expansion states.
But most of that spending growth is covered by the federal government. It turns out that states which accepted the Medicaid expansion expect state spending to grow more slowly than in non-expansion states.
In other words, the non-expansion states really are shooting themselves in the foot. They’re enrolling fewer people, but paying more to do it. They actually prefer spending more money if the alternative is spending less but helping their own poor with medical coverage. Hard to believe.
